‘Tis the Night Before Christmas Eve, and We Have a House!

Hallelujah!

Yesterday when I got up, I was pretty sure we were going to get a phone call and we would have a house. God had filled me with His faith. But I didn’t know how much of a struggle it would be to get into a house, especially before Christmas! There were two possibilities. The first was the house that a Christian couple was hoping to find someone to lease to own. They would have rented it, but they would have kept it on the market and showed it while the renters lived there and would have made the renters move out within 30 days if they found a buyer. We didn’t want to live that way, but we were getting rather desperate, so I called them to see if they would just rent to us at least until we found somewhere else to live so that we would have some place to unload all of our stuff from the moving truck. I couldn’t get a hold of them because they were on their way to Hawaii. The staff of the realty sent them voice messages, but they never called back.

The other house was the 3000 sq. foot one that we had been turned down for because the agent thought we had too many kids. He knew about the “rule” that only two people were allowed to occupy a bedroom. According to that rule, we would “have” to rent or even own a 6-bedroom house, no less. We have never even seen a 6-bedroom house available for rent. Gary called some commissions and some other agencies and found out that the rule is for unrelated people and that when a house exceeds 2900 square feet that rule doesn’t apply. He also found out that a den could be considered another bedroom, too. He called the man back and told him what he had discovered. I was so proud of him for fighting for his family that way.

The guy turned out to be a great guy. He was out of town yesterday, but he made sure that he showed us the house today at 11:00 AM, in spite of other pressing appointments and traveling he had to do. We had sent him all kinds of information through email to try to speed up the process. Yesterday, I asked him how soon we could move into the house. He said his record was 25 hours. I think we beat that record! We saw the house at 11:00 AM today. We brought a completed application with us. We went ahead and gave him a security deposit. He said he had everything he needed to present to his broker. He couldn’t say for sure whether we would be accepted, but he said he felt very good about the whole thing. He gave us the phone numbers for the utilities. We called to put them in our name.

He called a couple of hours later and said they were working their tails off to get us out of that hotel. He said that our package had been approved and that they were writing up a lease agreement for us to sign. They were making another key since there was only one. He called a little bit later and said that one of their representatives was going to meet us at our hotel so we could sign the lease and take possession of the key!

So we hurried home from the bank where we were opening up an account, so we could deposit Gary’s paychecks and continue paying for all of this stuff. Then we signed a lease agreement (which felt like we were signing for a mortgage) and got the key to our new house!

The house is beautiful! It is going to work out very well for us. There’s even an intercom throughout the house. I will be able to gather everybody for school without resorting to yelling and throwing tantrums.

I don’t have any pictures yet. My camera batteries died, and the ones we bought from Dollar General are no good! But I promise to put some on here as soon as I get some.

Thank you so much for praying for us and for interceding. There was nothing easy about any of this. We had to fight for everything that we got. This was a battle, but we knew we had the victory. Because God gives us the victory. I was so sure that God would give us the house before Christmas. And He did! It’s our Christmas miracle.

PS I’m so looking forward to cooking again. I can’t believe I said that!